Special Service and Features
CSIR Laboratories in Chennai celebrate AKAM-IP Festival
As a part of the month long Rashtriya Boudhik Sampada Mahotsav-IP  awareness campaign being underway across the country in continuation to the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebration of our country, the three Chennai based CSIR Laboratories – CSIR-CLRI, CSIR-SERC and CMC have jointly organized the IP  Festival during the period July 17-20, 2023 underlining the theme 3M  for ATMANIRBHARATA. In line with the ongoing efforts to create awareness among the citizens of the country on the impact of IPR , which IPR has indeed emerged as an effective tool for gaining self reliance or ATMANIRBHARATA, to foster innovation ecosystem towards attaining self- reliance, the events during the four days were planned in such a way that all sectors of the stakeholders could derive benefit out of the sensitization program. Thus, the program strived to provide an enabling platform to sensitize target audience on the IP enabled growth model and involved two different venues catering to different target audience as well as different resource persons during the 4-day period.
The program was inaugurated in the Triple Helix Auditorium, CSIR-CLRI on the 17th July 2023 by Shri Habib Hussain, Chairman, Research Council, CSIR-CLRI and CEO, M/s AVT Leather & Allied Products Pvt Ltd, Chennai. He underscored the importance of IP sensitization for gaining global leadership through self reliance. The inaugural ceremony commenced with the welcome address of Dr KJ Sreeram, Director, CSIR-CLRI, who gave a historical perspective of the IP sensitization activities undertaken by CSIR on a continuous basis. He also gave an overview of the proactive roles played by CSIR in mid-90’s towards revocation of the Turmeric patent in the USA. Shri S Thangapandian, Joint Controller of Patents & Designs, Chennai Patent office, highlighted the roles played by the Indian patent office to sensitize a million citizens on the importance of IP. Shri K Somaraju of L&T Ltd. and Shri C Anbumalar of PA Footwear Pvt Ltd. shared their thoughts on the different dimensions of the impact of IPR. Dr. K Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC & CMC emphasized on the importance of IP literacy for sustained growth. Around 200 participants attended the inaugural event.
The inaugural session was followed by a Technical session on IPR in the same venue. The target audience for this event involved industry personnel, start ups, Engineering students and staff members of the CSIR laboratories. A total of around 155 students from Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology and Ethiraj College for Women accompanied by a total of six faculty members, participated in the event. Shri S Thangapandian, Joint Controller of Patents & Designs, Chennai Patent office, delivered the awareness talk titled as An introduction to IPR. During the talk, he presented an overview of IP and different types of IPR . The deliberation was immensely interactive, covering different dimensions of IPRs in a very simple language. He also highlighted different pro-active initiatives taken by the Indian patent office to encourage Start ups and also to fast track patent grant in India. Around 250 participants comprising students, research staff and industry personnel attended the talk.
The second day, i.e. 18th July, 2023 was primarily earmarked for the students of Tamilnadu Govt. schools and the venue for the event was the Vigyan Auditorium, CSIR-SERC. Around 350 school children from Chennai Girls Higher Secondary School, accompanied by a total of 15 faculty members participated in the event. The session started with the welcome address of Dr. N. Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC and Co-ordinating Director, CMC. Taking example of India’s self reliance especially on vaccine during the COVID 19 pandemic, she emphasized on the importance of sensitization of young minds towards protecting the IPs generated by their creative ideas. Shri S Udhaya Shanker, Deputy Controller of Patents & Designs, Chennai Patent office, gave the awareness talk titled as Introduction to IPR and its Impact. He explained the issues related to IPs, IPRs and their importance predominantly in Tamil  with multiple live examples for the convenience of the school children. He was able to arouse enthusiasm among the students for different types of IPR, covering patents, copyrights, industrial designs and trademarks. The entire session was interactive. Shri Udhaya Shanker concluded his talk with a small quiz and the students were found to perform immensely well, indicating that their understanding of the concept was pretty good.
The deliberation of Shri Udhaya Shanker was followed by a talk on Artificial Intelligence – an overview, delivered by Dr. N. Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC and Co-ordinating Director, CMC. During her lecture, Dr. Anandavalli, highlighted the significant contributions of some of the great Indian scientists for the cause of science and human life. She emphasized on the importance of taking right inspiration from nature to develop inventions of significance. She introduced the topic of artificial intelligence to the school children in a very simple language to draw their interest towards this subject. The students were awarded certificates of participation. After the session, all the students visited different laboratories of CSIR-SERC to gain practical exposure of different S&T developments.
The third day, i.e. 19th July, 2023 was primarily earmarked for the college students and the venue for the event was the Vigyan Auditorium, CSIR-SERC. A total of around 300 students from Vel Tech University, Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology and Central Polytechnic College, accompanied by a total of nine faculty members participated in the event. The session started with the welcome address of Dr. N. Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC and Co-ordinating Director, CMC. She focused on the need for sensitizing the young students towards creating and leveraging IPR to gain self reliance. Dr. R Bhanumathi, Deputy Controller of Patents & Designs, Chennai Patent office, was the speaker for the session and her talk was titled as Intellectual Property Rights-Indian perspective. During her talk, Dr. Bhanumathi explained the modalities for different types of IP protections. She also explained the territorial nature of the IPRs and provisions under which certain protections are not possible under the respective Acts.
The students were then taken to CSIR-CLRI for visit around laboratories in the Institute. They visited three laboratories in the Institute to have practical exposure on leather and leather products.
The venue for the event on the fourth day i.e. 20th July, 2023 was the TH Auditorium, CSIR-CLRI. The session was planned with an objective of catering primarily to the research scholars, faculties, research personnel and staff members of the National Laboratories. A total of around 200 students from SRM Institute of Science & Technology, Vadapalani and SDNB Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai, accompanied by their five faculties participated in the program. There were also participants from NASTEC Team, Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of Nagaland, Kohima.
Shri M Suthakar, Associate Partner and Patent Agent, LexOrbis, was the speaker for the session. In his awareness talk titled India: Do's & Don'ts before filing a patent application, Shri Suthakar gave an overview of different IPRs, IP strategy, patent search. He also highlighted different dimensions of Invention Disclosure Form and modalities for patent filing, prosecution, grant and maintenance. The issues were explained in a very simple language and this attracted interests of the audience, that was evident from the lively interaction that had taken place during the session.
During the valedictory session, both the Directors of CSIR-CLRI and CSIR-SERC & CMC expressed their immense satisfaction on the grand success of the AKAM - IP festival by way of sensitizing a significant number of citizens of the country in the domain of IP, IPR and implications thereof. It is encouraging that some participants attended the program on virtual mode through link. This sensitization will certainly play a major role in strengthening the capability of the country to attain IP enabled self reliance towards gaining a leading position on the global platform.
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